Conventional delivery of video programming involves distributing video content to users via terrestrial, cable, and satellite systems. With the advent of faster Internet connection speeds and greater bandwidth, increasing numbers of users access video content online. Video on demand systems allow users to access video content over a global communications network, such as the Internet, and watch selected content on their computers, portable computing devices, and the like. Typical video on demand, or online video, services stream this video content to users over the network for viewing while the video is being transferred to their computing devices. Recently, some video content providers have begun allowing users to download video content for viewing on their computing devices after completion of the download. In addition to allowing offline viewing, downloading a video file in its entirety to the user's computing device allows the user to obtain higher quality video content and, thus, improves user experience.
Much like conventional video delivery, advertising provides a major source of revenue for online video services. Unfortunately, a particular end user may have no interest in the goods or services being advertised in the particular video they are viewing, and, thus, can be left with a less than stellar opinion of the online video service.